De Anima (On the Soul)
49. Phantasms and Understanding: Aristotle on Intellect, Mill on Higher Pleasures, and the Five Intellectual Virtues
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/4-de-anima/049-phantasms-and-understanding-aristotle-on-intellect-mill-on/

[0:01] Now, the human pleasures, this way of speaking here, it's suggested to me by Osterwee's article there in the Thomas there on the toward an evaluation of music, right? Okay. Um, where he's saying that the pleasures of the fine arts, right, the pleasures say of music and drama and so on, right? These pleasures are too high for the beasts, and too low for the what angels, right? But because man is an animal with reason, right, they're most proportioned to man, and involve the senses like music does, but also they appeal to reason, then.

[0:53] And the fiction appeals only to imagination, but also to reason in a way. And so these pleasures are the ones that are are properly human in the sense that they belong only to man, right? Huh? These pleasures here he shares with the beasts, maybe in a more refined way. These ones he shares with the angels in a perfect way. So I try to improve upon, Mill right?

[1:21] Aren't just beastly pleasures, human pleasures, but you should distinguish them into these what three, right? Okay. And so this is Mill's attempt to say that what

[1:38] you are the beast, right? Huh? Because you think when I say that pleasure and pain are the criterion of good and bad, right, that the only pleasure and pain I'm talking about is the ones that we share with the beasts, right? Now I put Mozart on very often, and Tabitha took more interest in Mozart. I go out to the kitchen, you know, noontime to get a little sandwich meat or something, and no matter how gently open the refrigerator and how silently I try to take out that you know sandwich meat or something, you know, she's right there sitting next to me, you know, waiting for a handout, see?

[2:17] But she'll sleep right through the whole Mozart, right? I don't know what you say. I used to pretend that she liked Mozart, but I don't think we didn't have

[2:27] So I mean? They're too high for beasts, right? But the angels are too low in the sense of the angels who don't have what senses and what imagination, right? Okay. Now, a sign too that these pleasures are partly human

[2:49] is the fact that we can enjoy these pleasures more than either the other ones, right? So I can't sit down the evening and eat for three hours and continue to enjoy myself, right? As I say, there's, there's first of all law of diminishing returns in these things. Remember, Mark said the first glass of beer tastes better than the second one. In fact, the only thing that tastes good is the first sip.

[3:19] he says So, it's down here, right? But I could sit, you know, at a concert and listen for two and a half hours to a Mozart opera, right? You see,

[3:32] more easily I could sit down and do something like this for two and a half hours straight, right? You see, here's kind of a strain, right? Okay. So these things here are most proportioned to man. By the angel, he's always understanding, right? He's always at the, you know, that's why Aristotle kind of admires these pleasures here because he says when he talks about God. right? If God has these pleasures in a higher way than we do, right?

[4:03] And if he's always enjoying these things, right, it compels our wonder, right? Because we're only somewhat in that high state of mind, we can be intensely understanding something. So that's to some extent an answer that what Mill gives, right? Okay. But he doesn't entirely escape the charge that his philosophy is a beastly one because the only criterion he has, ultimately for good or bad, is pleasure and what pain, right?

[4:38] Okay. And if he puts these ones higher, it's because he says those who have experienced these, right, say that these pleasures are greater than those down here. Okay. And it's only the the man who hasn't really experienced these higher pleasures who thinks these are what the greatest things that there are, right? So the little kid thinks that candy is one of the greatest things in the world, right?

[5:07] Huh? Yeah. But that's not as enjoyable maybe as Mozart or Shakespeare or Euclid or something, right? But he hasn't tasted these higher pleasures, right? But man who has experience of all of these will say these are better than those down there. Okay. Even Aristotle talks about that, right? These higher pleasures. And that's very important in the moral life too, because as Thomas Aquinas himself says,

[5:39] those who can't taste these higher pleasures are apt to go to excess in these lower pleasures because that's all they what know, right? Okay. So Mill, in a sense, like English philosophers, they call them the what empiricists. Tied to experience as opposed to the rationists. But pleasure is not the only reason to call something good. And but that's the only way the senses know good and bad is through pleasure.

[6:13] So in a way, his philosophy is still in some sense what beastly, right? Although he has some kind of answer, it's not it's not as beastly as a philosophy that would say that what the pleasures of eating and drinking and reproducing are the greatest goods in the world, right? You know, like kind of the common man might think, right?

[6:41] I used to work on the shipping dock there in the summer, sometimes. The regular guy in the shipping dock says to me one day, "He said, 'What would you do if you won the sweepstakes you know, the lottery? He said, 'Well, I'd find a quiet place and do some studying. ' I said. " So I messaged him, "What would you do? " He said, "Well I'd get a hair, he says.

[7:05] Okay, okay. So he's not that beastly in his philosophy, right? Mill, right? Because he realizes these higher pleasures. But insofar as he doesn't have what any criterion of good and bad other than pleasure and pain, he has only the kind of criterion that the senses have. They know good and bad only in a particular way, right? As pleasant or painful to the what senses, huh? Okay. By reason can see much other reasons, much better reasons for something being good, huh?

[7:39] So, so reason understands useful, but it also understands what the noble, right? Huh? What is an end or a goal? So reason can see that understanding, let's say, in general, but understanding God ultimately is something good apart from the fact that it might be very pleasant to understand God, huh? You see, but you can see it's good to know the truth and not be mistaken, right?

[8:16] Apart from you know, and somebody might be mistaken, and and and he's he's pleased with what he thinks. But reason can see there's something bad, right, in being mistaken, huh? Apart from questions of pleasure or pain, huh?

[8:37] So, so Thomas points out in the commentary there, you have three steps in a sense, right? In the senses, huh? That they first sense something as suitable or not, and then they experience pleasure or pain, and then they what pursue or avoid, huh? Okay. By reason can affirm something to be good or bad. Before any experience of pleasure or pain, and to be enjoying and to be pained is to be at work with the sensitive means.

[9:14] Going back to the common sense there, in regard to what is good or evil or such. And then the last sentence there the next sentence is kind of obscure, but as Thomas says, he's thinking that what the sense desire is not necessarily in a different part of the body from the what senses, like Plato said. If you read the Republic of Plato, right, he had the senses and the sense desiring powers in a different part of the body, right?

[9:49] But even if they're in the same part of the body, they would still be different in what definition, right? That's what that famous. way of speaking, but their being is other right, okay.

[10:09] Okay, now he's going to start to uh assimilate, reason in a way to the senses and make the comparison between them, huh? To the thinking soul, however, okay. And I think the word there—I think I mentioned that word before here. Let me just check it here again. The dianoetic psyche, right? Okay. I spoke of that word before, dianoetic, huh? It's kind of interesting that Aristotle uses that word dianoia.

[10:43] Kind of English, here. Has kind of the sense of what understanding through something else, right? It has something of the sense of what Shakespeare calls what discourse. Discourse, yeah.

[11:00] And you can see that as I mentioned before, I think, in the beginning of the Posterior Analytics, and in the beginning of the Posterior Analytics, he's saying that all dianoetic knowledge, right, is through pre-existing knowledge. It's all a result of what Shakespeare calls a discourse, right? You're coming to know something through knowing something else, huh? Okay. And if you read that first part of the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle refers back to the Meno of his master, Plato, right?

[11:41] In the meno, you see, Socrates makes the famous statement that learning is what recalling. And is that true or false that learning is recalling?

[12:00] Well, there's some distinctions that you have to make, huh? You see. If you're talking about the senses, learning is not recalling. So if I taste candy, or licorice, or chocolate, or something else for the first time at the child, hmm, I like this mummy. That's an immediate thing, right? See, I'm not tasting the chocolate; I'm tasting something else. I'm tasting the chocolate directly, or the licorice directly, or the, you know, whatever candy it is, right?

[12:31] Okay. And even you know, as an adult, right, if someone says, you know, this is really good, you say, "Can I taste that?" You know, yeah, he's enjoying it, right? Hmm, yeah, that is good. See, but that's kind of an immediate thing, right? Immediate means what? Not through some middle course of work. Now,

[12:52] this does have some truth, though, if you're talking about learning by what. Reason right, or learning by discourse, to use Shakespeare's word, huh? Latin word, huh? But even there, you have to see a distinction, because when you learn by discourse, you don't recall what you learn,

[13:18] but that through which, or from which, or by which you what learn, huh? Okay. So learning is recalling not what you learn, but that through which you learn, huh? That from which you learn, right?

[13:56] So when you learn a new theorem, say in geometry, right, you're not recalling this theorem, but you have to recall things that you already know and put them together to see the new theorem.

[14:11] When you define, you're coming to know distinctly what you're defining, but you have to recall things that you're going to put together in the definition.

[14:27] So it's appropriate that Aristotle, when he talks about deductive knowledge, and is going to say that it's through pre-existent knowledge that he recalls the discussion in the what Meno, right? Okay, but you have to start out the Meno because Plato in the dialogues never gives you the whole truth about anything,

[14:50] and I think the reason for that is that he's respecting the human mind, and human mind is apt to see a part of the truth before it sees the what whole truth, right? And therefore, you need a certain humility, right? As the great Empedocles says, right? And then he says having seen but a part of life, they boast of having seen the whole. So having seen a part of the truth, right?

[15:19] Men often out of pride, right, attribute to themselves more understanding than they really have, right? That they've seen the whole one, and this is a common thing.

[15:37] I think we mentioned that when we're talking about the definition of the soul, right? The two most probable opinions about the soul is that it's say what an immaterial substance independent of the body, right? Um, in no way really connected with the body. That's like, you know, according to the Platonists, you know, migrate from one body to another, right? The famous story is told about Pythagoras. Somebody was beating a dog, and he says, "Stop beating him!

[16:10] I recognize the soul of my dear friend, so and so." It's kind of the dog now, right? You see. So that's one opinion, though, that the soul is an immaterial substance, right? Entirely independent of the body, right, distinct from the body. And the other opinion is that the soul is the what? Accidental form, like the organization of the body, yeah. Okay. Well, each of these opinions sees a part of the truth, but the soul is, as we found out before, is a substantial form, right?

[16:51] So the one who says it's an accidental form has seen part of the truth. It is a form, but it's not in the genus of accident; it's in the genus of substance. And those who said it's a complete substance, independent of the body, had seen a part of the truth that it is something substantial, but not the whole truth, right? But Aristotle brings together the parts of the truth that are divided amongst those men, huh?

[17:17] Okay. So, but it's necessarily through pride that a man thinks he's seen the whole truth, huh? But it certainly is the nature of our mind, you see, to see a part of the truth before we see the whole truth. And so, Plato, in the dialogues, I mean, as you read the dialogues, there's quite a few of them, you'll notice that part of the truth comes out in one dialogue, and maybe some other part of the truth in a what?

[17:46] Another dialogue, and maybe Plato wants to what? Respect the nature of our mind. I know, and from experience, you know, in teaching college students here Aristotle's text, I mean, here you've got the whole brought together, right? Yeah. And they never see the whole, even though it's there in front of them on the page. You see, so you realize the human capacity to understand the whole isn't there all at once to understand the whole, right?

[18:22] And it's only gradually that we see it there. Okay. So let's go back here now to 349. To the thinking soul, the dianoetic soul is what he calls it. However, the phantasms, the images, we can call them in English. That's where we get from phantasm is where we get the word fancy, though, right? Okay.

[18:58] And that's kind of interesting the history there, the word fancy, huh? But you know, in English, fancy came to mean what? Imagination. Yeah, but also means romantic love, right? Do you fancy her? Oh yeah. You see, but that's pointing to the role that the imagination plays in what romantic love, huh?

[19:27] So if you read Shakespeare's sonnets, there when he's talking about that kind of love, he says, "O me, what eyes hath love put in my head that hath no correspondence with true sight?" Okay.

[19:39] So. Strictly speaking, romantic love is not exactly the same thing as sensual love. I mean, there may be a connection, right? Romantic love is tied up with the what, imagination, huh? And so the object of romantic love is is is things like charm. But charm is something that appeals to the what, imagination, huh? Just like what's his name, the English poet Keats, there, right? He complains, you know, when the philosophers get a hold of something, all the charm goes out of it.

[20:18] We poets we write these charming things, see, but once a philosopher gets a hold of it, all the charm is gone. It should be gone because they're appealing now just to reason, right? But but the poet is appealing to imagination, huh? The key passage in Shakespeare is the one in *Midsummer Night's Dream* where he says, "Lovers and madmen has such seething brains, huh? Hot brains, huh? Post-logic-logic, such shaping fantasies, right?

[20:52] That apprehend more than cool reason ever what comprehends, huh? " And he goes on the next line and puts the poet in there. The lunatic, another name for the madman, the lover and the poet are of imagination all compact. He goes on to illustrate how they, you see. But I think that's a beautiful connection there between the lover, the madman, and the poet, huh? And as Shakespeare says in

[21:28] *Love's Labour's Lost*, right, huh? Never did a poet put dare to you know put pen to paper, right? Ink to paper, paint to paper, until he had what, experienced love's size, right? Okay. So it's some connection there between the lover and the what, poet, huh? Okay. And Kierkegaard does something very interesting on that in *The banquet, huh? He says,

[21:58] whoever heard of a man becoming a poet to his wife, huh? Okay. But what he says is, he says, one time one of the speakers is praising women, He says, men have become what, you know, saints, you know, through women, huh? They become poets, right? Was never through the woman they got, woman they didn't get, right? Of course, the standard example is that of of Dante and Beatrice, right, huh?

[22:21] See, but the same thing with Kierkegaard, right, this unfortunate termination of his engagement, right? Okay. But kind of, you know, unhappy love, right, is kind of releases the poet for some reason. So so the poet is a little bit like the lover, huh? And Plato says that too in the Symposium, huh? But he's also a bit like the madman, huh? And when Aristotle is talking about how the the good poet has to be able to assume the character, the person he's writing about, so he can speak the way that person would speak, right?

[22:58] Either has to be, as he says in the Greek, there euplastos huh? He's immodable, right? Or else he has to be a little bit of a madman, right? And you really think he's this this man, huh? And there's some truth in that, huh? You know, when Dostoevsky was was writing Crime and Punishment, huh? He was pacing the floor, you know, and and the landlord down below thought he really was plotting a murder.

[23:25] But he's he's he's so entered into this what character, right? You see, so he's a little bit like a madman who thinks he's Napoleon, but he isn't, right? But temporarily he does, huh? I was talking to an actor one time who had played Shylock there, right? This guy was a Catholic, and as far as I know, a good Catholic, you know. And every time he'd go by church, he'd always bless himself, you know.

[23:49] But when he was in the role of Shylock, he he hated Christians, you know. Like Cepheus hates Christians, you know. But I mean, it's almost like a madman, right? You see, he he he's he's taking on that, huh? You see. And sometimes you you try to really play, really get into the part, you know. You you figure yourself kind of, you know, going a little bit mad, you know, because you see.

[24:14] But but but that's interesting, huh? The likeness between the poet, the lover, and the madman, huh? And lovers are given to poetry, as he always says, and so on, huh? But they're all tied together by the what imagination, huh? And that's why the lovers are attracted to charm, but the poet also is what writing somebody that's charming, huh? Magic, appealing to imagination.

[24:45] But now there's a connection here between the thinking soul, nevertheless, and the phantasms. To the thinking soul, the phantasms or images are like the sensibles, right?

[24:58] But when it says or denies the good or the bad, it avoids or pursues. I notice the difference there between that and the senses, right? Because the senses don't really what affirm or deny, huh? But experiencing pleasure is like affirming, and experiencing pain is like what this is bad, like denying it, right? But notice he says in 348 there, talking about this pleasure and pain and so on, it pursues or avoids as if affirming or denying, right?

[25:31] It doesn't mean that it affirms or denies. Only reason does that, huh? But the thinking soul says this is good or bad or reverse, huh? And doesn't have to go through pleasure and pain to see that, huh? Okay.

[25:51] So when someone you know tells me you know that, you know what a syllogism is? No. What's a syllogism? Well, that's an argument in which some statements laid down, another one follows necessarily. It's the only kind of argument where the conclusion follows necessarily. A reason right away sees what? That's good to have an argument where the conclusion actually follows necessarily, right? Is it because of some feeling of pleasure that somebody recognizes as being good?

[26:25] No. You see in the fact that the conclusion follows necessarily, the importance of this kind of argument, huh? You see. And so, what? Maybe I should learn something about the syllogism if I want to, you know. Okay.

[26:41] Or someone says to me, you know, you know, the best things to know, you have to learn them through argument, right? Well, I don't know. Well, it's agreeable to have to argue all the time and define and. You see, but I might see something good, right? Maybe I should learn something about how to argue and reason. Maybe I should study some logic, right? It's not as if I've tasted logic, oh, it's such a pleasant thing.

[27:09] I want want some of this. No, I see that it's useful and necessary, maybe for the good of my mind to reason. Now, he's going to say this again in the next reading, but this third sentence in 349 there, Whence the soul never understands without a phantasm, huh? That follows not from the second sentence, but it follows from the first sentence in 349, huh? Okay. He's saying, and this is the proportion of Aristotle, let's put it in the form of a proportion here.

[28:00] He's saying that the images or the phantasms, you want to use the Greek word, the phantasms is the Greek word, but the English word, the Latin-derived word is more appropriate. The images are to reason, right?

[28:19] As the exterior sensible is to the what senses? There's a certain what lightness there, right? So I can't see the color of the painting over there. If you take away the painting, right? I can't see the color of your robes, right? If you take away your robes, right? Okay. You leave the room, right? Okay. I can't see the redness of the fire extinguisher over there, whatever it is, without it being there, right?

[29:05] And reason can not what Understand what it is, as something imagined, right? Without you imagining that, okay? And that doesn't mean that understanding is in the what phantasms, right? Any more than this means that my seeing is in the painting, or my seeing is in the fire extinguisher over there, right? Okay. But the likeness is this: when I see the red of that thing, I'm seeing the red of that thing out there, right?

[29:54] So when I see your clothes, I'm seeing the blackness of your what garment, right? I'm seeing the color of something outside of me, right? Okay. So I can't see the color of something outside of me without there being something outside of me for me to see, right? And I can't understand what it is of something sensed or imagined without at least what imagining that, huh? Okay. Now, if you look at the De De Trinitate of Thomas Aquinas there, I mean Thomas of Boethius, right?

[30:27] I mean Thomas Aquinas, right? Thomas Aquinas, right? One of the objections about thinking about God is that you can't imagine God. So if you don't think without imagining something, and you can't imagine God, how can you think of God, right?

[30:47] Well, obviously that can be the first thing you think about, but how can you think about Him at all? Well, one way is by what

[30:59] a relation to what is being what imagined, right? Or another way might be by what negation of what is being imagined, huh? So when I say God is not a body, I'm imagining a body. I'm not imagining God. I'm imagining what I'm negating, right? I can't negate body unless I understand what a body is. I can't understand what a body is about imagining a body, right? Okay.

[31:26] You see that? And that's natural for our soul when it's in the body that it turned to the images, huh? But our understanding is insensible in that sense. And that's natural for our soul. Kind of curious on the dependence that our thinking has too upon words, which are something sensible and imaginable.

[31:55] We seem to think in words, right? Just like also when we calculate, when we add, subtract, multiply, we calculate in these figures, seven, six, and so on, right? You know, you need something sensible, right, in which you consider these things.

[32:13] Is the phantasm just the imagination, or does it require also first memory experience? Is it really the object of the estimated fact? Yeah, you've got to be careful here because images here don't mean necessarily the poetic image that the poet has, you know, what they call the creative imagination, that sort of thing, right? It can maybe be the image that that's from memory, right? Okay, so it doesn't have to be something originally formed, right?

[32:52] Okay, there's a tendency nowadays to use the word imagination for something that is formed for the first time by imagination. Yeah. Like if I imagine a glass mountain or a gold mountain, right? I I I've experienced mountains, I've seen mountains, and I see gold or glass, right? But I've never seen any what gold mountain or a glass mountain. I remember reading the kids a story about the prince trying to get this glass mountain.

[33:22] you know, as a horse grew up. but you're imagining this glass mountain, huh? But that's really not what he means here necessarily at all, right? Okay. If I'm thinking about what a triangle is, I will have to imagine a triangle, okay? Because I'm understanding what it is, of what I've imagined. Okay. If. I understand what a square is, I've got to imagine square, right? If I understand what a man is, I'll imagine a man, right?

[33:57] Okay. And that's why a blow on the brain, as we were saying before, or alcohol going to the brain, right, it affects the the images, right? It can affect the what thinking, right? Huh? Okay.

[34:15] And you know, or disease, something of this sort, right? Huh? Can affect that, huh? Okay. And especially, of course, you know, in the singular, right? People that Alzheimer's or something like that, right? They don't even know those who are closest to them, right?

[34:37] Remember Charlie used to work with in the package store there, and he had something like Alzheimer's there towards end of his life in the seventies or something like that. He didn't know the guy he worked with for twenty years in the in the what store together. Oh, you know Dick. You know, you've worked here. He worked for 20 years with Dick.

[35:01] They say with President Reagan, you know, that he's got Alzheimer's, right? It's kind of very bad now. See, but they can show him, you know, his inauguration. He doesn't know what it's all about. You know, that you're president of the United States, and you you don't know this. See, because the singular is very much tied, you know, especially to the images, huh? I guess it's getting so he already knows.

[35:25] You know, Nancy Reagan doesn't know if he knows her anymore. He doesn't know his wife anymore. You know, it's really yeah. So you've got to see this connection here, right?

[35:39] But you say just as it doesn't mean now that that people make mistake of thinking because of this they think that understanding is in the brain, right? You see, but understanding is no more in the brain where the images are than my seeing the color of your clothing is in your what clothing. What I see is in your clothing, yeah. It's something of that, but my seeing is not in your garment, huh?

[36:07] You see, my seeing is not in the painting over there. See, but if you take away, if you walk out of the room, I can't see you anymore, can I? If you take the painting away, I can't see anymore, right? Okay, you know the seeing is not in the painting, but what I'm seeing is something of the painting, right? Yeah, so you have to realize that, huh?

[36:28] The reason is understanding is that what it is is something sensed or imagined, so you have to imagine it in some way, huh? And if you can't imagine, either you can't think about it all, or you have to know it by negation of what you imagine, right? Or by some kind of what comparison to what you you know understand, like God is the unmoved mover. Yeah. Aristotle lays out the natural order: the senses, then memory, then experience, then natural understanding.

[37:03] Yeah. And he puts experience in there. I had to connect that with the collative faculty. Mm-hmm. And so that. the experience is necessary in order to arrive at the universal, right? So you have to, in a sense, compare, right, the many singulars of the same sort, right, before the acting upon understanding, the agent intellect, so-called, will separate out what they have in common, huh? But even after you've done that, right?

[37:38] When you want to understand, right? Again, this universal, you have to form an image, right? You have to go back through your whole experience, right? But you have to form an image, right? In which, in a sense, you consider what a triangle is, huh? But again, you don't want to confuse what you're understanding and what you're imagining, because you might be understanding what a triangle is in general, right?

[38:08] Even though you're imagining an isosceles triangle or equilateral triangle, right? That's where Locke gets mixed up, right? Because he's saying, what is the general idea of triangle? Is it isosceles or scalene or equilateral? Well, didn't know what to say, so he says it's all and none of these. He can't imagine triangle in general, but you can understand triangle in general.

[38:37] So if you've learned some geometry, you realize that reason is able to understand triangle and to demonstrate something about triangle in general, right? Every triangle has its interior angles at the right angles, huh? But when I understand that theorem, I'm imagining a triangle, which will maybe be isosceles or scalene or equilateral, right? I'm understanding something universal about this, right? Directly.

[39:07] Okay. Now in 350, there he's developing this comparison, right? That the images or the phantasms, as the translator has here, are like the sensibles, huh? And he's comparing in a way the reason to the common sense, huh? That just as the common sense, in a way, is a common what? Term, right? Of all the outward senses, huh? So in a way, reason is common to what? All the what?

[39:41] Things which you might have images, huh? Okay. So just you have, you know, the whiteness of what? Sugar, right? And the blackness of licorice, right? Or even the whiteness of sugar and the sweetness of sugar and the crunchy sound of sugar if you eat it or something, right? Okay. And they all come back to the common center, right? Okay. So you have all these images, right? That reason is what?

[40:10] Able to think about, right? Okay. That's what he's saying there, basically, there, huh? A bit obscure, huh? A and B there are what? The the sensibles and C and D, as Thomas tells us, are the what? The phantasms or the images he's talking about, huh? Okay.

[40:37] Now he goes on here talking about the practical here in two fifty one. The intellectual part understands the species in the phantasms. Now, if if our soul was an immaterial substance like an angel, and there was this world of species or forms that Plato talked about, then you'd be knowing them what independently of the senses. But because our soul is the form of a body, right? Its object is that what it is is something that's in the body, okay?

[41:18] So it understands the species and the phantasms. Okay, then he goes on to say that you can what talk about something in the past or present or in the future with the reason because you can have an image, right? I can say now tomorrow I am going to go to such a place, and you know I am going to go to London before too long. So I am saying I am going to go and visit the Elgin Marbles, right?

[41:45] You know that's the most famous thing in the British Museum, right? Okay, I guess Greece wants them back, right? Because they came from the Parthenon.

[41:57] So, so I can imagine something and be making plans and I am going to desire this thing, right? Do you see? Okay, because you can imagine the past or the future, right? Okay, and isn't

[42:18] those is defined for it? Doesn't seem like very well translated there. So apart from sensation, when it's concerned with phantasms, right, it is moved, right? Huh? So I might be what imagining something in the past, and then I laugh about it again when I think about how stupid I was or something, right? Or if I imagine something embarrassing in the past, you know, then I I groan maybe again.

[42:47] Oh, what's matter? What's matter? I just remember the past. There is one guy in graduate school, right? He always told the story I guess he he was going by the parish house, right? And he had to go to the bathroom just terribly, so he kind of knew the landlady was the thing. I used to have the bathroom. Well, yeah, I guess that was fine, but something went wrong with the toilet, and he couldn't stop it.

[43:18] Just kept on, you know, it wouldn't shut off. You know, going on through the floor. So you remember this? He could laugh about it, but it was terribly embarrassing. Yeah. Situation to the end, you know. You saw his bathroom, and he kind of going either way. I mean, the intention is the bathroom, and all sudden you get under this problem, you know. And

[43:51] so, so in the case of sensing, right? Aristotle says, well, you might sense, let's say, that the town is on fire, right? Huh? Because the enemy are attacking, right? Huh? And so you start to to act on that matter, huh? But reason might do the same thing, but with regard to images, right? You imagine something, right? You start to plan, right? To pursue it, right? Or to avoid it, right?

[44:22] You foresee this thing is coming, right? Or you imagine something that could come, and you're going to act for it. You're going to try to to avoid it, huh?

[44:32] Okay. Now that's going to be important later on when he gets into talking about action, because he's going to be saying, like Shakespeare. Shakespeare says, that man is the animal that has the what sense of time, huh? Well, if you remember how Shakespeare defined reason, there is looking before and after, and as Aristotle points out in the categories, the first meaning of before and after is in time, huh?

[45:01] So there's a way in which man lives in time, more so than the other animals, huh? The other animals live more for the here and now, but man is always what? If he's using his reason, he's looking before and after, right? And this is very important because that's where you first what start to see the use of reason, huh? Even in the pursuit of these so-called what beastly pleasures, right, huh?

[45:29] The stock example I use in class is it's apparently a a fact of life that freshmen get sick to their stomach from drinking beer more than seniors do.

[45:41] Well, what's that result of? Not looking before and after, right, huh? Because you're thinking just a here and now, this extra beer or this extra drink, right, is attractive here and now, right? But it's going to make you what sick in a short time, and you're going to feel lousy all night. Don't get to get your night's sleep, right? The next day, don't even want to see that stuff, see?

[46:16] See? Now, but if you experience that number of times, you say, well, then you realize that if you don't drink so much, you won't be sick. You get a good night's sleep, and you're going to get up the next day and start yourself again drinking, right? Okay. That's not a very high, high, high life pursuing at this point, right? But but just in terms of the Epicurean principle, right, to maximize your pleasures and minimize your pains, huh?

[46:47] See? And the same thing with pain, you know. I mean, sometimes you have something wrong with your tooth or something like that, and and sometimes you learn from experience it's not good to put off going to see the dentist, right? In the long run, you're going to suffer more. Maybe even lose a tooth or something, right? So it's better to go and have a unpleasant session with the dentist, right?

[47:11] Get it over with, right? If you're putting it off, you're worrying about it, and you're got some irritation, and you're going to probably suffer more in the long run, huh? So.

[47:27] It's beginning of the use of reason, not the highest use. The other things you got to look before and after to see are more important than drinking, maybe, or something like that, right? But just in terms of drinking, right? You have to use your reason a bit to maximize your pleasures and your pains.

[47:54] Now, in paragraph three fifty two, as Thomas says, he's because he's been talking about action here. He contrasts very briefly the what is sometimes called looking reason, theoretical reason, or speculative reason in Latin, but I like to use English for looking reason and practical reason. Right? What's the difference between the two? Huh?

[48:25] He says they're basically about the the same thing, but the what looking reason is more what universal, right? Huh? Okay, that's what he's saying. He says, but in this they differ by considering things simply in relation to someone. Huh? Now let's just expand a little bit upon that. Huh?

[48:53] Looking reason. or practical reason. or I don't mind the word practical reason too much, but theoretical or speculative reason have all kinds of other connotations in English today, you know. But the Greek word theoretical or the Greek word Latin word speculative are originally looking, right? Okay. Well, looking reason, practical reason are really the same reason, but they differ in their what in their purpose, huh? Okay. And here the end is what basically truth, right?

[49:32] And here the end is some kind of doing or making, huh? Okay. Now it's interesting when Thomas, in the Summa Theologiae, he comes back to the five virtues of reason that Aristotle distinguishes in the sixth book of Nicomachean Ethics. Thomas divides the five virtues of reason, the intellectual virtues, so called, into those virtues of looking reason and those virtues of what practical reason, huh? Okay.

[50:17] And so the three virtues of looking reason. Our natural understanding, and then reasoned out understanding, and then wisdom. Okay, but in Greek it would be what nous, just understanding, In Latin they call it intellectus, the first virtue. and this what in Greek would be called what episteme,

[50:57] and Latin they call scientia, the science of geometry or something, and then wisdom, which in Greek is sophia, Latin sapientia. So nous or intellectus or I call natural understanding, and episteme and sophia were the three virtues Aristotle distinguished that are in looking reason, and then in practical reason you have what?

[51:29] Well, you just see the terms prudence and art, but if I use English, be foresight, foresight or prudence, and what art? Okay. So Aristotle contrasts these two, see, but looking reason is more concerned with truth and therefore with the universal, and practical reason is more concerned with the ad hoc, the singular. Okay.

[52:04] Now I was at the car dealer this morning, right? Okay, getting oil change and so on, right? Okay. And trying to get a part there that had broken. Anyway, I don't like looking at the big details, right? So I'm looking at the news magazine there, kind of the waiting room there, where the prayers are being. So here comes out the old, you know, the old slogan, you know, that uh I used to always quote as being the British, you know, we have no permanent friends or enemies, just permanent interests, right?

[52:41] And they're talking about how the application of it was in the articles that they're filled with now, news magazines about Iraq, right? See, and when we were in kind of a fight with Iran, right, and they had taken our people, yeah, and so on, then we were what encouraging Iraq to make trouble for Iran, right? So Iraq is our friend. Now Iraq is our what enemy, right?

[53:11] Okay. And the case of England there, right? The Napoleonic Wars. France is the enemy, okay, and Germany is the ally, Austria. But in the first and second world war, France is the friend, and Germany and Austria are the enemies, right? Okay.

[53:37] Um. So there is something singular, and ad hoc, about the practical, isn't it? You know who your friends are, who your enemies are, but they're always changing. They're changing the course of time, right? But the looking reason would say, "What is a friend? What is an enemy? " Right? That doesn't change. But here it's like what kind of extension, right, down to the singular and the particular, right?

[54:06] And Aristotle in the what's it, the second book of wisdom, there with these contrasting, he was going to show that wisdom is primarily about the truth, and truth belongs primarily to wisdom, and he says that.

[54:25] The practical reason there, the the end or goal is not really truth; it's to do something, right? Okay. But he says even the kind of truth they're concerned with sometimes is kind of a contingent truth, right? Who's our friend? Who's going to go along with us, right? Who's going to oppose us, right? See, and that is what as the examples of Iraq shows, or France, and Germany, and so on, right?

[54:55] That can change, right? Okay. While looking reason isn't concerned those things are changing. It's concerned those things that are always true, right? A triangle always has its interior angles at two right angles. Iraq is not always our friend, right? See. So he's contrasting a bit the looking reason with the practical reason, huh? Sometimes Aristotle says that the looking reason becomes practical by extension, how they being extended down to the what singulars and the particulars, huh?

[55:34] We saw that contrast a bit back in the premium to wisdom, right, where Aristotle was saying how the man of experience experience may succeed better than the man of art or science in doing something. Because his knowledge is closer to the singular, and the singular is what you what do. You don't cure a man, but you cure this man, right? Okay.

[56:00] So. Now, because he's been talking here about the. Connection of reason with the senses. In these last two paragraphs, he goes over it to talk about those things that are kind of removed, more or less, right, from the sensible world. And how does reason, right, knows those things?

[56:36] And in 353, he talks about the things which are really material things, but they're understood without matter, like number and shape and extension and so on. And then 354, he reserves to wisdom the consideration of those things that are what altogether immaterial.

[57:02] Okay. So he says the mind thinks the so-called abstract things just as if someone should understand the snub not as snub, but separately as curved and curved. You would understand without the flesh in which the curve is. Now this is Aristotle's stock example there of the snub nose. Apparently, the snub nose is kind of a curved nose, right? And apparently, none other than Socrates himself had such a nose.

[57:31] And so everybody knew about this, and it's kind of right in your face, right? Example, huh? And what's the difference between talking about a snub nose and talking about a curve? On the snub nose, you have all that cartilage, whatever this nose is made out of, right? But in the curve, all the matter is what gone, right? Okay.

[58:00] Thus it understands, he says, the mathematical things, not being separable in existence, right? Like Plato thought that there was a world, a mathematical world, right, corresponding to pure mathematics. There's only the sensible world out there corresponding to it, but it understands them as separated, right? Okay. Whenever it understands these things, huh? So we talked about that back in natural philosophy. Aristotle says there's no falsity in understanding cube without wood or ice or anything else, right?

[58:38] Or understanding sphere without earth and sun and rubber ball and so on, right? Because it is knowable without that, right? And curve is knowable without nose or flesh, right?

[58:53] Now if you say that such things, because they're understood without matter, they also exist outside of our mind in a world of their own, right? That Aristotle thinks is a Platonic mistake, right?

[59:08] But notice the fact that we can understand things in the material world, like shape and extension, without matter. Is a sign of the immateriality of our understanding.

[59:23] Why should understand material things in an immaterial way? Why should understand things that are found only in reality in matter? Why should understand them without matter, right? Well, because you understand them without matter, right? But that's because of the understanding itself.

[59:45] Now he says, one must inquire later whether it can understand something among the separated things, when not itself separated from magnitude or not. Can one understand the angels or God, so long as our soul is in the body, right?

[1:00:03] And of course, Aristotle doesn't answer that question here, right? It belongs to wisdom to answer. Talking about in wisdom, you know, one of the first questions is, are there immaterial things, right? It's only after you know that there are immaterial things that you ask, well, when or how can we know them, right?